ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte will be in East London on Wednesday and Thursday to start afresh the investigation into the legitimacy of the newly elected ANC Dr WB Rubusana regional executive committee.
The leaders were elected last month, but members from 15 ANC branches in the region have registered disputes on how the two-day conference had been constituted.
The conference, which started on August 31, saw Pumlani Mkolo win with 120 votes against the 107 votes of former chair Xola Pakati, the Buffalo City Metro mayor.
Duarte is the head of the national appeals committee and her team visited the province a week after the conference to investigate cases lodged by several ANC branches.
Among them was ward 25 in Phakamisa, which challenged why branches were not given a 24-hour cooling off period following the ANC’s decision to allow the region to go to an elective conference, as required by the ANC’s constitution.
The branch also registered a dispute about the fact that the elections commission announced that 223 voting delegates would take part in the elections of the new leaders but 229 took part.
The Dispatch can reveal today that Duarte has summoned ward 25 – along with wards 8, 13, 20, 21,23, 25, 29, 30, 35, 39, 44, 49 and 50 – to a meeting on Monday with the entire executive branch executive committee present.
Duarte, in her letter dated October 5, said also present at the meeting would be “the appellants and the REC and PEC deployees to the region”.
“Where there are parallel branches, both BECs are to be invited. The national disputes resolution committee (NDRC) will listen to each dispute, branch by branch,” Duarte wrote in the letter addressed to ANC provincial secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi.
The Dispatch reported a week ago about the NDRC’s pending visit to the troubled Dr WB Rubusana region, after an initial report Duarte presented to the ANC NEC recommended that the Mkolo-led REC be disbanded.
However, ANC secretary general Ace Magashula announced at the meeting that his office had received more disputes from the region and so the meeting resolved that the decision to disband the region be shelved until all complaints had been addressed.
Rubusana regional secretary Antonio Carlisle confirmed Duarte’s two-day visit to BCM, adding: “She is here to start the hearing of disputes afresh; that is critical.”..